


Wake me up

by Runespoor



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen, Gotham, Gotham eats her children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No need for a shrink to tell her what her dreams mean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake me up

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt “Gotham devours all its children”. Spoilers for Gotham Central and Pipeline, and generally everything Renée.

Nightmares are nothing new, on the whole. You don’t ever really get used to nightmares, but you learn to expect them. That’s what you get from being a cop, and that’s what you get for living in Gotham.

Over the past couple of years, Renée’s been not-a-cop, and she’s lived not-in-Gotham; she hasn’t yet managed the trick to do both. Only Gotham. Only in Gotham it would be easier to quit drinking than to quit—she still thinks of it as home. She protests when someone else does, it was a long time ago and she was a different person then. That’s a half-truth at best; she’s not sure she’s different enough. The question is: can she ever be enough of a different person that Gotham doesn’t eat her up?

Vic and she talked about these things, once; he told her he was from Hub City, and she tried to tell herself she was surprised. He’d left when the city had gone to hell, but Renée never had been able to.

She’d stuck around for all the crises in Gotham, the Clench and the quake, she’d been promoted during No Man’s Land, and she’d stayed when the OMAC struck. Gotham was only part of the rest of the world when it seemed like it was the end of the world, typical.

She’d been a teen and a beat cop and a detective, a drunkard and a lover, she’d fought all of Gotham’s battles and when the Religion of Crime finally got her, she’d put down money on their finding city blocks in the place of her lungs.

There were always teeth in her dreams.

Laughing teeth and green hair; Detective Montoya worked Major Crimes. Romy joked about it once, said it was hard to go wrong with Joker nightmares. Course, that was back before she lost her partner and took a shot at Batman. She probably wouldn’t find it so funny these days. Then again, she might. Everyone can change over two years. Renée doesn’t have the answers.

Others are more personal. Back in the MCU, Renée got nightmares about Harvey.

Her life falling into pieces around her; people looking right through her; beating Lipari into a pulp and shooting Daria; looking into the mirror and seeing half her face was scorched away. Batman swooping down behind her. He looked disappointed as he drove her to Arkham, and when they arrived, he handed her a business card.

“Call my lawyer,” he said with Bruce Wayne’s voice.

It was always Harvey who showed up to defend her on her trial, and Two-Face stood as the judge. No Man’s Land all over again.

Or, more simply, her struggle with Harvey. After he’d kidnapped her and he – sweet mother of mercy, he expected her to dine, and it made her roll her eyes in cheesy movies, but it had been her life and it had felt unreal.

They’d struggled for the gun and she was going to shoot him. It would’ve been self-defence, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about. Struggling for the gun, and when she got it she was going to _kill him_. Kill him before he hurt Daria.

Kill him for _threatening_ Daria.

It was the second time she would’ve murdered someone if given the chance. Batman would’ve looked so disappointed.

She never could talk about the Harvey dreams. Too personal. Last thing she wanted was to find her personal business put up the walls of the squad room.

She missed Gordon. She would’ve talked to Gordon. She’d always told Gordon stuff she didn’t tell others. Captain Sawyer reached out to her, but come on, Renée couldn’t. The Metropolis and Gotham issue again, maybe. Cris. Cris wouldn’t have turned her problems into squad room gossip. But her partner was kind of an asshole.

And again, Metropolis. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to be the one saddled with the shining people from the city of tomorrow. On the whole, she had nothing against them. At times it made things awkward. They’d crash into a wall of mutual incomprehension. Metropolis methods didn’t work in Gotham.

She has nightmares of the Clench, still. They went away for a while, but they’ve started back. After Vandal Savage.

Maybe it’s because she’s back in Gotham. It’s not that many months since she left, but it was a lifetime ago. She’d hoped she was a new person, as blank as her mask promised. Turns out she can’t leave Gotham behind.

Her nightmares are about the fanged skyline of the downtown skyscrapers sinking into her, and the sturdy molars of squatter buildings crushing her up, now. She wonders if Gotham will swallow her whole, or chew her out.


End file.
